Nestled in one of Europe’s most beautiful landscapes, the Lanserhof resort on the Tegernsee in Southern Bavaria offers 70 rooms and suites. Guests can enjoy preventative and regenerative treatments in this health resort. The Lanserhof combines luxury hotel facilities and state-of-the-art medical care under one roof.

The architecture of the Lanserhof matches and supports the health philosophy of the resort. The cubic building with clear lines integrates well into the landscape. The floor plan follows the classic concept of a cloister, whose wings surround a green and protected courtyard that offers ample space open to all guests. It is overlooked by the rooms and suites with the green façades of the two upper storeys. The architecture follows the principle of “less is more” to support the spirit of the place with a reduced and simple design, natural materials and abundant daylight.

Large windows and loggias open views to the surroundings of the bathhouse, a nearby golf course and the landscape. Sliding shutters with fine wooden lamellas provide visual privacy and solar shading for the loggias, and create open or semi-opaque spots. Like separate “houses”, the guest rooms reflect the principle that every guest should have his or her own place of refuge. Natural materials support the therapeutic effect of a stay at the resort and are part of an overall holistic approach towards a healing architecture. The health-promoting architecture emphasises research in building biology to ensure its compatibility with health aims. All choices were made in accordance with the criteria of the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB). Mainly natural and untreated materials were used, such as larch from certified sustainable sources for the façades. Wooden surfaces, shades of white and warm colours create a contemplative ambiance in the treatment and social rooms. The light colours and the elegance of the interiors add to a peaceful and friendly atmosphere. The floor-to-ceiling windows and generous loggias at the front of each room provide broad views of the Tegernsee valley.

The project aims to recover and integrate an old site, already used as an orphanage, built on a portion of a hilly area next to the old historical centre of San Miniato. The “CASA VERDE” project, so called because of his historically/social value (CASA / home / orphanage – VERDE / Green / built in a forest of holm oaks), is a search to find links:

The project is part of a bigger site plan, which is now almost totally realised. Actually is only missing the basement laboratory part on the southwest side of the building, which will be built, according to the agreed program, from 2018.

The idea matrix is to protect, in materials and shapes, (as evidenced by the roof geometries) the original plan and emphasize the extension with shapes and materials close to contemporary culture.

In this elaborate design process the awareness to act inside a fragile landscape helped us; in fact we choose the inhomogeneous green color for the second level of the facade to investigates the ability to insert and mitigate the new volume in the context. The ventilated façade has not only a color value, but it has different levels of reading: the double micro perforated panels gives diaphaneity when your point of view is too close to the building and massiveness when viewed from afar.

Finally, but not marginal element, the micro perforated filter and the openings facade on the main elevation exalt the relationship between indoor and outdoor space: natural light filtered by the micro-diaphragm creates inside, on the main stairs, a well-being and feeling space; the openings on the main elevation create two optical telescopes that project the user of the inside on the outside historical access of the old house in one case and, the old farmhouse (under renovation) in the other.

The indoor spaces, in their simplicity, wanted to recreate the feeling of being in a carded wool space (in view of neuropsychiatric disorders). The basic color used is a light grey (code 7047) with colored lines (green, blue and orange) forming the three different zones where the girls lives according to the degree of their disease. Green, Blue and Orange are also in furniture details and in the icons on the walls/doors (pear/strawberry – dining room, TV – room TV, smile – living room, boy /girls – gym, patch – medical center, washing machine – dishwashing room, pot – kitchen, sofa-living room) to identify the various functions.

extreme lightness of the extensions of the existing building: steel structure and Knauf Acquapanel system. The aim was not to increase the weight at the top of the hill in order to maintain the slope stability;

the double micro perforated aluminum facade improves the summer energy performance building refreshing the most exposed sides to sunlight;

the thermal power centrals have been integrated into the landscape by building partially underground maintaining the continuity of the landscape;

the outside parking is built lowering the ground level creating a reinforced wall supporting lands.

Tetusa Oasis Thermal Resort is an extensive wellness and medical facility set in the midst of low-rise housing area in coastal town Cesme in Turkey. In this well known leisure town with a long history of thermal water exploitation the decision was made to enrich the town’s offer with new central thermal complex including spa, water park, hotel, medical prevention center, elderly care facility and some other supporting programs.

First glance at urban regulations for location in question reveals that the square footage needed for the program considerably exceeds the footage that can be placed above the ground. We found the solution in special design feature. The entire program is organized in circular building blocks wrapping around an inner atrium. The inner side of atrium is then deepened allowing sunlight to come to underground levels. The same principle is also applied to semi circular parts of building on outer side where the surrounding terrain is used to hide the view on extra levels.

When adding additional levels to the building the whole building block is adapted to fit to sloping terrain. With introducing also some additional height difference to allow views from the atrium towards the surroundings the basic building block gets very recognizable and attractive shape. The building as a whole is designed by repetition and multiplication of basic building blocks. In that way different programs are organized around separated outer spaces helping to differentiate the parts of the building. Every block is again modified according to terrain. The blocks are then connected to each other forming the entire complex.

The inner atriums that are the result of functional organization of needed program are together with attractive roofscape also one of the main design elements of the buildings. Visually separated but connected through the inner program the atriums form some kind of numerous oases where each of them hosts different program.

Expression of the entire complex is very uniform. Atriums and half atriums are those who define the outer spaces of separate programs. The twisted roofs that are adapting to hilly terrain are at the same time very attractive and are helping to diminish the presence of the complex in the surrounding.

CO Architects’ innovative expansion and modernization of the 100-year-old Natural History Museum (NHM) of Los Angeles County fully engages museum-goers and puts an interactive and contextually responsive public face on the museum. Through a highly visible redesign of the museum’s North Campus, featuring a new glass pavilion, entry bridge, outdoor amphitheater, and newly developed landscape, the museum has become an inviting indoor-outdoor experience for visitors and passersby. The iconic Beaux-Arts style 1913 Building was retrofitted and renovated—along with the famed Dinosaur Hall—via an investigative process referencing original drawings to preserve the building’s infrastructure. With a completely re-imagined campus, the museum now offers its patrons an active and dynamic center for public engagement and scientific exploration for the next century.

The Museum’s North-facing front entrance looks toward busy Exposition Boulevard, and can be easily accessed by public transportation. Redesigned in the 1970s, the façade was set back from the street. To remake the front entrance into a welcoming portal for visitors, CO Architects demolished the concrete terraces and parking lot that formed the approach to the museum, and excavated the entire North Campus entry to provide improved access. The re-thinking of the North Campus resulted in 3.5 acres of outdoor space ripe for educational programming and “urban wilderness” nature experiences.

Since the former parking lot was reclaimed to allow for more green space, the architects designed a new semi-subterranean two-story car park to accommodate 221 vehicles, maintaining the number of previous spaces. The flowering vine-topped facility is sited to minimize impact on pedestrian flow throughout the North Campus, and designed for maximum natural light and ventilation. Thick, circular glass bricks embedded into the walkways allow daylight to reach the underground space. A 12-foot green screen alerts drivers to vehicular entrances at the north and south ends of the structure. On exit from the structure, visitors approach a new admissions booth.

A prominent feature of NHM’s new “front yard” is the glass-walled Otis Booth Pavilion, serving as the museum’s main entrance. It is accessed through a soaring pedestrian bridge from a promenade connected to Exposition Boulevard. The project architect’s inspiration for the bridge based on large-scale mammal bones came from his childhood home in Germany, where retired sea captains would erect massive whale bones in front of their homes to indicate their eminence in the community. Welcoming visitors as they enter the pavilion is a spectacular display of a 63-foot-long fin whale skeleton—one of the museum’s signature holdings—seen from the exterior as well through three glass walls of the pavilion. The frameless-glass structure epitomizes design and engineering prowess. Its structurally glazed curtain wall is constructed of vertical suspension rods and horizontal knife plates. East and west sides have a receding frit pattern on the glass to mitigate solar heat gain. Radiant ground-level slab conducts heating and cooling. The ground level—under the bridge—enables a visual and physical flow of the interior and exterior, providing a seamless transition from the café and Nature Gardens.

The new Nature Gardens, designed by Mia Lehrer + Associates, dynamically engage visitors with interactive representations of the ecologies of the Los Angeles area, spotlighting native flora and fauna in the spirit of urban biodiversity and “backyard science.” Vibrant community- ntegrated green spaces extend the mission of the Museum, and its reverence for nature, into the greater Exposition Park area.

CO Architects’ retrofit and renovation of the T-shaped 1913 Building married preservation of a 100-year-old building with innovative technology from the 21st century. Using extensive data from the museum’s archives, the project team renovated the building by uncovering the original design, layout, and construction methods of the building and its 1920s additions in order to preserve and simultaneously modernize it. The program included seismically strengthening and retrofitting the building’s exterior masonry walls with current technology that would have no visible impact on the historic fabric. Seismic retrofitting was accomplished by drilling six-inch vertical cores from roof to foundation. In total, 122 cores were fitted with steel rods and filled with a high-strength polymer resin compound that bonds masonry and steel. It represents the largest application of this cutting-edge technology in the United States.

Attention was also paid to the painstaking restoration of many striking architectural details and decorative flourishes, some of which are now visible for the first time in decades. CO Architects worked with artists to replicate a sculpture for the portico—an ornamental detail missing for almost a century—because the original sculpture broke during an earthquake in 1920. Inside the building’s iconic central rotunda, the dome’s jewel-toned, stained-glass interior apex skylight was painstakingly restored by Judson Studio’s David Judson, grandson of the skylight’s original designer. The dome’s cracks were repaired with injected polymer epoxy and gutters were replaced with new copper flashing. The architects implemented solar gray glass panels in front of the windows to screen out 100% of UV rays.

The three exhibition wings were lightened up through additional daylight options as well as the new use of glass. CO Architects designed new rooftop skylights for two wings whose original ones were beyond repair. Constructed of aluminum and insulated glass, these energy-efficient skylights flood natural light into the museum. Interior illumination in exhibition areas was also enhanced by uncovering the large arched windows that had been covered over. The designers responded to a push to further “lighten” the galleries by eliminating mass while retaining the building’s original feeling. A major intervention was the replacement of solid, heavy concrete railing on the rotunda’s mezzanine—which visually separated it from the main level—with clear glass partitions. The glass has the effect of unifying the levels, making it one space, and encouraging people to visit both levels.

The museum’s famed Dinosaur Hall was one of the original wings updated, as well as expanded, and reconfigured. Using data from the archived original designs, the architects seismically stabilized the walls by stiffening the north-south access with a massive sheer wall, while softening the east-west wall with a series of full-height glass sections—bringing in natural light and views to the south for the first time. Wide-span skylights also balance the force and tension of the structural walls. To create a flow between the Hall and connecting building, glass balustrades, steel framing, and retro-plate concrete floors were seamlessly extended to a mezzanine-level bridge. The displays were redesigned, in collaboration with the exhibition teams, to give visitors an eye-to-eye perspective of dinosaur specimens while on viewing platforms. Further renovations included a new glass elevator with views of the butterfly pavilion and gardens.

Home to centuries of Los Angeles history—as well as millions of artifacts spanning billions of years—the NHM is the centerpiece of Exposition Park. CO Architects modernized and restored the venerable museum for the future, making it ready to take on 21st-century urban life.

CO Architects is renowned for its extensive portfolio of large and complex institutional, civic, academic, laboratory, and health care projects, including facility evaluation, renovations, new structures, and comprehensive planning. The firm has designed major “benchmark” and award-winning facilities for clients that include the University of California, Columbia University, Palomar Medical Center West, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Kaiser Permanente. CO Architects is sought after for functional, green, and graceful solutions for academic, civic, and institutional needs.

This project is part of a larger operation, including medical facilities for children and seniors.

The approach was above all an experimentation with the void, all the voids, their definition and hierarchy: the void of the square, the long void of the promenade and the ones of the planted courtyards and patios. These voids create spaces for breathing, distribution and porosity between the various parts of the project and the railways.

The thickness created by this over 200m-long landscape-building, forms the bower, the calming horizon that orders and unites the activity and the public spaces of this emerging neighborhood.

The school complex is a protective U shape around its courtyard, its volumes defining the spaces between the younger and the older students. The building offers many views onto the courtyard, the vegetation and the sky. The gymnasium, located at the end of the building and open onto the square, offers strollers an observation point onto sporting activities.

The Westmead Millennium Institute (WMI) is headquarters for one of the largest medical research institutes in Australia. The building brings together staff traditionally housed across six sites of the Westmead Hospital campus.

The WMI building is designed to provide a flexible space that facilitates connectivity and collaboration amongst the research community, in line with WMI’s ‘bench to bedside’ approach. The design reflects the idea of ‘seeing the science’, whereby the form of the building reflects the inner workings and functions.
Laboratory areas are stacked atop each other and planned in a linear arrangement on each floorplate providing efficient services distribution, heightened PC2 circulation between floors and flexibility in the use of the laboratory areas. The structural grid responds to laboratory requirements and accommodates future expansion of the laboratory areas.

Beyond the PC2 areas an atrium provides physical interaction and views between floors, as well as natural daylight to what would otherwise be a deep floorplate, typical of research facilities. Office space, dry labs and write up areas offering optimal connection to the lab spaces can be accommodated at the ends of the labs or adjacent to and along the length of the labs.

At the lower levels, the heart of the facility and social spaces are delineated clearly, with a two storey cafe space opening to a large external garden and recreational area.

To offer the community access to leading-edge cancer, stem cell and surgical therapies , the client collaborated with doctors, scientists, nurses and engineers to build a world-class medical destination for patient-first care. Connected to Thornton Pavilion and located adjacent to a new research facility, the 509,500 sf, 245-bed Jacobs Medical Center is a translational medical center in the truest sense — facilitating the convergence of research, education and excellent clinical care.

Although one building, the 10-story hospital functions as three medical specialty centers— housing inpatient services for high-risk obstetrics and neonatal care, cancer care and advanced surgical care. The building’s overall curvilinear form was driven by the design of the patient units, but also by advanced modeling to capitalize on views, maximize daylight and minimize solar gain and glare. The geometry creates a subtle continuous flowing curve of the exterior — a dynamic form that changes as one passes around the building’s perimeter. Integrated into the exterior are a number of elevated gardens and terraces that bring nature up to the patient level.

The organic nature of the exterior translates to the interior to create an intentional and natural flow. The patient rooms are equipped with modern finishes, and an award-winning custom headwall seamlessly combines all necessary elements and equipment into one sculptural element. All patient rooms are also equipped with an iPad that can be operated from the bedside, empowering patients to customize their environments and securely view their treatment schedules and medical records.

“Jacobs Medical Center was my first hospital project and I’m grateful to UC San Diego Health for the opportunity to work on this project and combine medical innovation with our studio’s architectural vision in such a dynamic building. The health center blurs the boundaries between research and healthcare delivery while elevating patient care experiences through creative technology integration, access to nature and beautiful interior and exterior spaces. Our team at CannonDesign is proud of the building and the positive impacts it will generate for patients and staff into the future.”

Jacobs Medical Center was designed collaboratively with caregivers and builders to create a healing space that integrates groundbreaking research and discovery with world-class patient care. It was designed to connect to our other medical centers and research institutes and literally bridges the work of physicians, nurses and researchers to deliver leading-edge medicine and access to hundreds of clinical trials all in one footprint.

Interior refurbishment project of an old medical center –a nearby Hospital former external wing- located on a basement in a corner, facing a private inner court community garden. A flexible layout plan allows, with very few changes, to keep the existing commercial-office use or to establish two independent apartments of 100m2 each: Eventually, a façade circulation and a door –nowadays closed between two mirrors- can be simply reopened connecting the whole surface again. The interior architecture is sustained on timeless and modesty values, with no hunger for novelty or protagonism but with a rather clear will for the endurance on time of the design, and subsequently of the investment put in the renovation. It aims to be capable of supporting any of the programs set by the property owners, whether it is finally housing or offices.

Either way, responding to its physical situation, the layout plan has been set to maximize the interior light by keeping always a direct visual connection with the façade from all rooms. In this spirit, the sliding doors can be left wide open during the day, increasing the effective light façade surface without breaking any visual privacy between rooms. Mirrors placed on the interior sidewalls that connect to the façade, enlarge the visual perception of this circulation and reflect part of the exterior light. The lower pinewood shelves extend the already generous windowsill all along the main ribbon window. Besides providing warmth to the basement light and general atmosphere, this piece of built-in furniture also solves the irregularity in the lower wall under the sill that the existent apron hid.

Another starting point is the mindset for reducing costs and building environmental impact: The original Silestone floor from the medical center is preserved and restored. So are the original wooden window frames, introducing double glazing to improve on security and thermal comfort. Kitchens and bathrooms have been renovated rather close to their original positions, also reducing on new installation costs far from the available evacuation drains and water or electricity supply systems. All construction materials have been carefully selected with priority for non-polluting and proximity produced materials, reducing as well the unnecessary transportation CO2 impact of imported materials and supporting the local building industry.

BGB is an unusual communications agency in that it’s not part of an international conglomerate, it’s privately owned, which means that BGB has a specific – and colorful – personality. TPG Architecture worked closely with Gregory Passaretti and Brendon Phalen, Managing Partners, to bring its new space to life with bright colors, themed conference rooms and other amenities that their youthful workforce would surely appreciate; BGB was founded in 2005 by Passaretti, Phalen and a third partner and it is tightly focused: the firm only works with pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device clients. BGB currently has about 215 employees in the new, two floor 47,000 square foot space.

When TPG first began working on the BGB project in 2012 at 462 Broadway in Soho, the designers were asked to create an environment that was vibrant, bright and unusual for three reasons: to delight the current staff, to pique the interest of potential new hires and for the clients. Most of the pharmaceutical companies are based in suburban New Jersey, and BGB’s offices are a cultural and style departure in the best possible way.

Spread across the two floors are 2 kitchens, 3 phone rooms, the “New York” flex conference room that can accommodate up to 22 people, 3 medium sized conference rooms that double as a billiards room, and 7 small conference rooms that accommodate 4-6 people, each named after – and designed with – a local street in mind: Prince, Greene, Grand, Spring, Broome, Orchard and Bond.

The office incorporates what were originally two separate cast iron 19th-century buildings. The bones of the space showcase classic Soho loft elements: wooden floors, high ceilings, columns throughout, brick walls and huge windows along the perimeter walls that, because this is on a corner, face east, south and west. The reception area on the 6th floor gently welcomes guests with a 5’ high, deep red divider and seating area that intersects a very long wooden table/bar along the length of the front (west-facing) wall. The table is a reception desk near the elevator, becoming a DJ’s turntable on the far side of the divider, and including beer taps a few feet away – must-haves for any downtown millennial-centric office. An adjacent lounge riffs on living room motifs with a big flat-screen TV, a non-working fireplace full of a pile of real wood, plaster-cast (anti-taxidermy) animal heads mounted on the wall, mid-century furniture and a kitschy life-size ceramic zebra.

Both floors are outfitted with private lounge areas and informal breakout stations for interns, per diem employees or anyone looking for a quiet place to work. TPG worked closely with its in-house graphics team to create a personality in each conference room; it was the client’s idea to strongly theme the street name conference rooms because they feel that their location in Soho is an integral part of the firm’s identity. Accordingly, Spring Street’s walls are covered in an oversized photo print of a vibrant spring landscape; Orchard Street walls are decorated in Flavorpaper bright yellow banana wallpaper and Greene Street’s feature wall is a mosaic of 3” wooden squares cut from skateboards. Furnishings were also carefully chosen and include Tom Dixon pendants in the Bond room and the Vitra chairs in the Spring room.

As a creative agency, BGB showcases its in-house design capabilities as well; bright graphics along the upper interior walls complement TPG’s interiors. Super-blown-up images of biological imagery like cells and tissue are abstracted and interspersed with photos of New York, all intensely colored, at the ceiling line.

The New York conference room is the largest and can be separated into two smaller rooms (called Uptown or Downtown) by a clear garage door that divides the space in industrial style.

TPG took each and every detail info consideration including the connecting stairs that boast an
oversized, supergraphic Star Trek theme against a deep blue background.

On the 5th floor, the library is a quiet working area defined by blue furniture, an intense yellow bookshelf, a graphic black-and-white accent rug and oversized Fontana Art dome pendant lamp. Nearby, employees can meet, work – or play billiards – in the Billiard Room, easily recognizable by three bright faux bookshelves.

Two surprising – and historic – features of the 6th floor were discovered during demolition. One, an old solid steel fire door, originally opened between the south and north buildings; it is stamped with “Underwriters Laboratories” and slides along its original hardware. The other is graffiti on one of the original brick walls, in a niche, dating to 1942; here “Ruby Falzer USNR” marked his name in an anchor logo. If a hipster art director were looking for a faux retro mark, nothing he or she could develop now would be as cool as this “found” graffiti.

The building has a dark appearance associated to a compact, stereometric and representative form with a contemporary and alternative language that is different to the one of common hospitals. This monolithic volume is distinguished by the protruding staircase along the east facade, a plastic and dynamic element, almost an extruded body that runs diagonally across the surface.

The solid and sculptural impression is strengthened by the choice of black color, played down by a crescendo of green foils that slightly protrude from the surface of the façades.

This seemingly introverted box opens to the outside on the north side with an almost full height glass surface: the facade of the main entrance is a transparent screen that reveals the activities taking place inside the building.

The seamless circulation occurs between the surgery rooms positioned along the outer perimeter and the service areas grouped in the center. The architecture of the interior, with its backlit glass walls, stands in marked contrast to the solid and dark exterior.

The building has been designed following a green concept: the crawl space in cellular glass, the ventilated façade, the low-emissivity glass, the LED lighting, the photovoltaic system, the recirculation of indoor air, solar panels, reduce the energy consumption of more than 50%.

Cellular glass is an excellent thermal insulator. The gravel cellular glass is produced by the recycling of glass, which may be reusable or recyclable at any time.

The ventilated façades, consisting of sandwich panels with an air chamber and an insulating panel of 20 cm, allow to the air inside them to flow for a chimney effect in a natural way, improving thermo- energy performances.

The low emissivity glass prevent the escape of thermal radiation emitted by the heating elements allowing a considerable saving of heating energy costs.

The air conditioning system controls temperature, humidity, speed and air purity conditions both in winter and summer. A filters’ system protects from bacterial invasion and provides healthy indoor air. The recirculation of the indoor air allows a heat recovery up to 90%.

The building has drop awnings in order to protect the building from solar summer radiation.

The project shows how, for the construction sector hospital as well, usually not taken into consideration in Italy from a formal point of view, it is desirable an attention that gives positivity to the architecture addressed to sick people.

In fact the main focus of the project was to find solutions that promoted the physical and psychological comfort of operators and patients.